‘BJP insulting Lord Ram’s name,’ says Shashi Tharoor as MGNREGA renaming row heats up

As the row over the MGNREGA renaming intensified, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday slammed the Narendra Modi government for allegedly disrespecting both Lord Ram and Mahatma Gandhi.

Tharoor said that the proposal to rename the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), to Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill 2025, or VB-G RAM B Bill, is an insult to Lord Ram.

Advertisement

“The Bill’s name is not right because 2 languages have been used while one language should be used according to the constitution. Removing Mahatma Gandhi’s name is not good in itself, but they used multiple languages to include ‘RAM’ in it. This is not a serious matter. Mahatma Gandhi used to speak about Ram Rajya, and the vision of Ram Rajya and Gram Swaraj was one for him. Ram Rajya will prevail in our country when Gram Swaraj is there… We can use the name of Lord Ram in various other contexts, but removing the name of Mahatma Gandhi? This is why I said don’t insult the name of Lord Ram, but they did the same.” Tharoor said.

Tharoor said that adding multiple languages while naming the proposed scheme is unconstitutional, as the Constitution calls for only one language to be used.

“By using two languages, they have used the words Guarantee, Rozgar (employment), and Ajeevika (livelihood) and then in the middle, ‘ and’ is also included, so they wanted to include ‘G RAM G’ in this,” he said.

Tharoor said that the proposal requiring states to bear 40 per cent of wages would eventually lead to an increase in unemployment.

“Many states don’t have the money to pay 40% of the wages, as per new mandates. In Kerala, the government is already broke, which means unemployment will increase if there is no money. This means the government did not think well about this and there should be a good discussion about it in the Parliament,” he said.